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Even as he keeps the Django tradition alive, jazz guitarist Lulo Reinhardt is scouting the globe in search of new sounds. Liza Power reports. TWO weeks ago Lulo Reinhardt played a gig in Germany to an audience that bobbed to each tune from the shallows of an open-air swimming pool. While their bathing caps shone in the moonlight and the water rippled not far from his feet, Reinhardt plucked away at his guitar, wondering, as one or another gig-goer took the occasional duck-dive, what his signature brand of Gypsy jazz might sound like from the depths. If there was a certain irony to playing a sound pioneered in the smoky, backstreet jazz bars of 1930s Paris by his legendary great-uncle Django Reinhardt to a crowd of affluent, bikini-clad German holidaymakers, Reinhardt is reluctant to acknowledge it. He is not choosy about where he plays, he says, ''just so long as people like my music''. Australian audiences certainly seem to. Over the coming weeks Reinhardt will play about 30 gigs across Australia on his sixth visit here since 2003. He travels with two guitars, one of which is a custom-made Indian rosewood and lapis lazuli-inlaid instrument that he designed himself three years ago. Reinhardt is inspired as much by his musical journeys through Spain and South America as he is by his roots in traditional Gypsy swing, and says the instrument acts as a kind of map to his musical evolution. Born, raised and still largely based in Koblenz, between Cologne and Frankfurt at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle rivers, Reinhardt is a thoroughly modern Gypsy. Indeed, those with an imagination fuelled by the films of celebrated director Tony Gatlif (Latcho Drom, Gadjo Dilo) or the writing of Isabel Fonseca (author of Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey) might be a little disappointed at Reinhardt's take on the traditions of his people. Obliging as he is to give a lesson in Gypsy history, he doesn't throw down a shot glass of whisky between songs and lace each note he plays with the sorrow and yearning of a persecuted race. That's not to say he isn't proud of his Sinti heritage - having a surname that carries with it generations of musical prowess certainly opens doors - just that he's never found reason to interweave his music with notions of politics or race. ''Even when I was in a band (I Gitano) with my father and my cousin, the lyrics were always just about fun and life, we never sang political stuff,'' he says. ''Then again, my music is without lyrics. I don't think of things in a cultural or political way. If I like a sound, I take it and use it. I don't feel as if I need to follow tradition." This philosophy has served Reinhardt well. He took up the guitar aged five with lessons from his father, who passed on his grandfather's guitar, an original 1940s Django model. By the age of 12, he was playing in the sextet led by his cousin Mike Reinhardt, and while many of his extended family are musicians, he says the myth that Gypsy offspring learn to play music the way other children learn to ride bikes is just that, a myth. "I have two brothers and five sisters but none of them play an instrument,'' he says. In the mid-'80s Reinhardt changed musical direction after becoming entranced by the Gypsy Kings, buying his first Spanish nylon-string guitar and experimenting with flamenco and rumba. His desire to evolve musically has as much to do with Django's influence as anything else, he says. "If you listen to Django Reinhardt in the '30s, '40s and '50s, he changed his style every five years. He was really modern in the way he created new styles and ways of playing." Reinhardt's own musical odyssey has taken him as far afield as China, Brazil, Africa, North America and beyond. After his Australian tour, he will venture on to Scotland and Canada. "I try to collect new sounds each time I travel,'' he says. ''I was in China last year, so I wrote the song Asia, on my new record, which brings in a Chinese influence and an Indian sitar. I have taken African rhythms too from my travels there.'' It wasn't until 10 years ago that Reinhardt devoted himself to music full time, however. There were stints as a bar owner, a professional soccer player, a painter and a billiard player before that. ''I was doing everything just to support my music." Reinhardt, who plans to return to Australia next year, is a big fan of Brisbane's annual OzManouche Festival, which he attended last year (manouche being the style of Gypsy jazz pioneered by Django Reinhardt). In sharp contrast to manouche festivals across Europe and America, he says the Australian version still has a soul. ''Most of the festivals are competitions and the musicians want to play as fast as they can and use Django's music to prove themselves… The technical skills are amazing, but music isn't supposed to be a race. It's supposed to be about passion."